#SoFL - Rare win for govt #ethics! .@dwightyoakamfan on North Miami's vote to torpedo #FL state Rep. Joseph S. Geller & Greenspoon Marder. Stephanie Kienzle connect-the-dots yet again, this time on what was really at stake for the public of North Miami.

#SoFL - Rare win for govt #ethics! .@dwightyoakamfan on #NorthMiami's vote to torpedo Joe Geller & #GreenspoonMarder https://t.co/kV2JikhAdH

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) November 25, 2015

http://www.votersopinion.com/2015/11/25/city-attorney-decision-north-miami-1-lobbyists-0/

For once, I have a blog post today that hardly needs any additional commentary or useful context from yours truly, because it's written with such care and concern by my friend, Stephanie 
Kienzle, who says everything that needs to be said -and more- about what was really at risk recently to the long-beleaguered citizenry of North Miami.
Specifically, in the way of lobbyists taking over more territory at yet one more City Hall in South Florida, and one lobbyist in particular, Evan Ross.

North Miami is a place I know intimately from growing up in next-door North Miami Beach from 1968-1979, when North Miami was not only home to some of my favorite people and place -and my barbers, the fabulous Spinelli Brothers, who used to cut my hair at their sports and show-biz memorabilia-filled shop on West Dixie Highway in the 1970's, when they still had many famous sports and show business clients who would always visit them when in Miami for a personal or business trip.
People whose faces and names you would instantly recognize today. 

(The Spinelli Brothers were even kind enough to sponsor me for Optimist football, even though I played for North Miami Beach Optimist, not North Miami, but they still received one of those very large sponsor photos of me in my uniform anyway in exhange for a donation to NMB Optimist. They hung the photo up in their shop, and trust me, when I walked in there with my Dad, it was always one of the first things I checked out upon entering, to make sure it still had its prime location!) 

North Miami was also home to some of the best though sadly, no-longer extant restaurants in all of South Florida, including Marcella's, on West Dixie Highway and N.E. 138th Street, with their legendary lip-smacking garlic rolls and amazing food smells that made both kids and adults salivate like crazy while you waited to get a table in a place that was almost always packed with happy customers.



Of course, North Miami is also home to the North Miami HS Pioneers were also the arch-rival of my school, the North Miami Beach HS Chargers, and thus the combatants in what was then an often bitter rivalry that split families, since until NMB opened in the early 1970's, North Miami High was the most northern public high school in NE Dade County.

I was personally eyewitness to many epic and hard-fought battles (and screaming matches) between fans over the years in soccer, football, basketball and even Girls gymnastics, in the years when I was the NMB Gymnastics team manager and the PA announcer for home meets, when NMB was far-and-away the best team in Florida, and had many hundreds of people attend our home meets.
We capped that my senior year by winning yet another GMAC County title, as well as a state title for our beloved coach -and amazing AP Science teacher- Pete Saponaro
That state championship was one we hosted in NMB, with me handling all the travel planning and logistics for all the invited teams from around the state, as well as media czar for the media that covered the meet. 

But even that had a North Miami angle.
"Sap" himself was a North Miami High grad before leaving for Penn State, where he was an All-American and co-captain one of the years that Penn State was the NCAA Mens Champion.

Before I was a Hoosier, I was an NMB Charger, Class of 1979.

My last blog post on the antics and activities of Florida state Rep. Joseph S. Geller was just over two months ago, on September 17th, in a post I titled, 
#Ethics still matter in South Florida! Stephanie Kienzle of Votersopinion.com keeps her eyes firmly on what's going on with the VERY CURIOUS legal antics of FL state Rep. Joe Geller, even as most of South Florida's news media keeps ignoring what's right in front of us.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/ethics-still-matter-in-south-florida.html

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif. due to the lack of serious reporters here, but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident named Dargenson is running for NMB City Commission, and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif., but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident is running for NMB City Commission and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?

If you ask me, it's too bad for South Florida's continually-beleaguered citizenry that FL state House Reps Frank Artiles, Joe Gibbons and Perry Thurston and FL state Senator Maria Sachs have never been forced by the powers-that-be in Tallahassee to publicly explain themselves and their very curious living situations.
Under oath 
In public.

Unlike Council candidate Chin Ho Liao in San Gabriel, CA, who was actually elected but not seated.

Oh, the great questions we'd all have all loved to have peppered our local political miscreants under oath with!

Speaking of carpetbaggers, if you haven't already been reading what straight-talking blogger Stephanie Kienzle has been saying with real vigor and much-deserved anger the past few weeks about North Miami Beach's faux City Commission candidate, Yvenoline “Yves” Dargenson -a woman who lives in Miramar, i.e. Broward County!- please do yourself a big favor and do so today via her blog, http://www.votersopinion.com/

You won't regret it because Stephanie gives you a very clear look at the corruption and illegality that passes for "normal" in South Florida politics and government these days, where far too many candidates and elected officials can seemingly break clear-cut rules about their prescribed conduct and behavior with relative impunity.

And the existing legal institutions that are supposed to keep people within the clearly-defined parameters of the law, instead, seem content to just shrug their shoulders and to let THEM dictate what the rules are to the public, putting everything upside-down.

Dargenson is the Broward County resident who running for a City Commission seat in a Miami-Dade city, and to both Stephanie and myself, she's someone who has a lot to to answer for publicly after the M-D Supervisor of Elections ruled that she lives in the City of Miramar.

But but based on what I'm hearing and reading, a Miami-Dade judge, Darrin P. Gayles, did
what M-D circuit court judges have been doing a lot of ever since my family first moved to Miami in 1968 -making bad decisions for the community and letting guilty parties walk.
Or, in this case with Dargenson, run for office in a county she does NOT live in.
No, it seems to have very little to do with upholding the state's laws or with getting justice for NMB's voters, to say nothing of actually adhering to Florida's Constitution.

Even more than usual, Stephanie has lots of great nuggets in her recent blog posts about the longstanding culture of corruption in NMB and North Miami, and actually makes the case that it's actually threatening to grow exponentially in NMB as a result of all the unethical goings-on in next-door North Miami that local and state law enforcement have been ignoring.

Ignoring it, it seems to me, in part at least, because so many of the people engaging in this
unethical political behavior in Northeast Dade are Haitian-Americans, a rapidly-growing voter bloc now compared to Non-Hispanic Whites in Miami-Dade County, and a demographic that is courted by candidates in ways that were not imaginable even thirty years ago, just a few years after I graduated from NMB High School, followed three years later bv my sister.

Perhaps nobody exemplified this cultural change as much as North Miami's oft-charged but never-convicted-thus-far incumbent mayor, Andre Pierre, though there are others on both sides of the border who are nearly as brazen.

Seriously, did you really expect the political crooks and their cronies in NMB not to notice the fact that nobody was being prosecuted in North Miami for what they do, no matter how self-evident?

Out in San Gabriel, California, you have the cancers of ethnic identity politics and carpetbagging at work, but with a Chinese-American patina, and a town that wants to go old-style New England and make the person accused of wrong-doing convince them that they have not broken the spirit and letter of the law.

Meanwhile in North Miami and North Miami Beach you just have... oh, right -the same things, just with Haitian-Americanss, instead.

Plus, thinly-disguised Black racism and grievance politics as both the facts-on-the-ground and reader comments to this piece make clear.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/04/3380678/north-miamis-upcoming-city-elections.html

Los Angeles Times

San Gabriel council deems itself judge over election results

By Frank Shyong, Los Angeles Times

April 27, 2013, 8:45 p.m.

San Gabriel Councilman-elect Chin Ho Liao was the second highest vote-getter in the city's March elections, but his first time on the council dais last week was as a witness under cross-examination.

The City Council voted not to seat Liao after resident Fred Paine filed a complaint alleging that Liao's true residence is outside of the city's borders. Though Liao has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to contest the council's vote, the city has also created its own hearing process to determine Liao's residency.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0428-san-gabriel-20130428,0,4091862.story

I can't help but wonder if this is what the good residents of North Miami Beach can look forward to dealing with in the coming weeks if a sufficient number of Haitian-American voters there are prepared to simply cast common sense and the facts aside, and vote for a woman who doesn't even live in their city, simply because Dargenson is Haitian-American, too.

Well, it's not like local Miami TV stations have spent any real time covering what's been going on there, now is it?
No, today, two days before the May 7th election, CBS4, NBC6, 7News and Local10 are all guilty of NOT doing a single story on Yvenoline Dargenson.

Seriously, given what this woman is attempting to do by blowing a hole in even the most basic requirement for candidate eligibility, how can that be so?
How can every single English-language TV station news operation in Miami just ignore this?
That, my friends, is the low level to which South Florida journalism has sunk to -a complete lack of curiosity.

It's as if they're waiting for her to win before covering it, no?

For more on the very curious and perhaps even unethical living arrangements of FL House Reps Gibbons and Thurston and FL state Senator Sachs, please see an archive of Tom Lauder's recent pieces on residency requirements at Florida Media Trackers

http://florida.mediatrackers.org/author/toml/

It makes for interesting reading, and the fact that the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office has gotten involved so many times in these cases -esp. with Gibbbons, who clearly didn't comply with the law- only shows how egregious the lack of serious reporting on this subject has been in South Florida over the years.
These pols have positively dared reporters to say what is right in front of us.

I'm sorry to say it, but it also appears from the all the available evidence that some local African-American reporters, columnists and editors down here have been very easy on both Gibbons and Thurston for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism, but everything to do with either shared political ideology or friendship.
(Whatever happened to the proscribed arms-length relationship between reporters and subjects?)

I've commented on it here before, because otherwise, how do you reasonably explain the fact that the Sun-Sentinel's Douglas Lyons has scrupulously avoided mentioning this obvious residency issue for years, despite how often he has mentioned Thurston and Gibbons, quoted them and interviewed them?
What is his excuse, anyway?

Trust me, despite whatever it says on their resumes, Lyons and other reporters at the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald  don't think they have to answer to readers, and I know about him because I've given him plenty of opportunities over the past few years and all he's done is nothing but sit there like a bump on a log.
That's who he is, you shouldn't count on suddenly getting any candor from him that you can have any faith in.
Lyons considers his refusal to ask reasonable questions, esp. of them, a dead issue.

Just another reason that I hope the Sun-Sentinel is sold very soon and that there's a great house-cleaning/bloodletting there to make that newspaper something it hasn't been in years -relevant and worth reading.

Scott Galvin's myopic FL-17 campaign never did the things it needed most to win: a persuasive/strategic outreach to Broward voters early this year

The Scott Galvin direct mail campaign literature in question.



Though it may look like it's rural Alabama or Georgia as you zoom past it on AMTRAK, that sign actually says "Welcome to Broward County." Above, August 20, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier of northbound W. Dixie Highway as it approaches the Broward and Miami-Dade county line, with unincorporated M-D to the south and Hallandale Beach to the north. This is part of the Florida 17th congressional district that has its primary on Tuesday.

"Know your universe" is the number-one rule of politics that I learned over many years of working on and being a high-ranking official of a successful national political campaign, after years of working on state and local campaigns and seeing what works and what doesn't work -and why- including in Dade County, as I've previously written here.

Trust me, all the hard work and faith of your volunteers and friends is completely wasted if you as a candidate don't have the heart to stick to a demanding strategy that puts real expectations on you to get out of your 'comfort zone,' and thereby force your opponent(s) to have to work much harder than they ever imagined.

Going the unconventional route, which, counter-intuitively in South Florida, means a campaign plan that emphasizes you projecting internal logic and common sense reasoning in your answers to questions, while you draw a contrast with your opponents continuing to make expensive empty promises, is one way to break out of the pack and draw attention.

When I first heard that North Miami city council member Scott Galvin was planning on running for the FL-17 congressional seat being vacated by Kendrick Meek due to what I saw as Meek's nonsensical long-shot effort to be elected to the U.S. Senate, I must admit that I was intrigued.

More accurately, I was intrigued at the prospect that someone whom I'd generally heard pretty good things about when I asked some usually well-informed people, might actually be that rare South Florida candidate with the smarts to know that in order to win in a congressional district of its peculiar shape and all-over-the-map voter demographics, with him very much in the middle of a pack of nearly a dozen candidates, he'd have to throw the traditional cookie-cutter political campaign out and go unconventional.

Not Robert Redford's Bill McKay unconventional in Michael Ritchie's 1972 The Candidate, obviously, but whatever it's 21st-Century South Florida lower-key congressional equivalent might be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K78U6XsHsg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkGhplApYt4



Especially when running against so many candidates of middling-to-little accomplishment or talent, none of whom physically looked like him, as he has been constantly been reminded of, over-and-over again by the South Florida news media, on those rare occasions this summer when they deigned to leave the cocoon of their air-conditioned offices and mix it up with the vox populi in the sweltering heat.

(Was there ever a summer in South Florida where so many political stories were written while never leaving an air-conditioned office, and done almost entirely by telephone? Discuss.)

No, in order to win in this environment, Galvin would have to run a campaign that was by turns compelling to voters and the news media, based on his unconventional campaign that took more than the average number of calculated chances, since the alternative was to simply play-by-the-book and lose.

He would also have to be entirely comfortable taking the attack to them, which in this race, would mean telling the entire truth about his opponents while waging an offensive campaign as the only White candidate in a majority minority CD, spelling out the specifics of what would make him the best representative of this crazy-quilt district, which will hopefully be changed a lot after re-districting so that NE Miami-Dade is part of it and Broward is not.

How many times have we heard that the best defense is a good offense?

But it's true for a reason and if you can recognize the organizational and structural weaknesses of your opponents -i.e. they're being completely unknowns in Broward County- and carve-out spheres of influence for yourself in Broward, bulwarks if you will, that force the other candidates to expend a disproportionate amount of time and resources battling for those areas, your initial investment of time and energy can pay dividends later in the race while you work on the undecideds.

After all, it's not a two-way race, it's a ten-way race, and you aren't going to go from unknown to 50.1% overnight.
Know your universe.

One of the ways you do that now, of course, is to take the initiative and try to find out what non-elected officials are looked upon by the community as straight-shooters whose advice people generally listen to.

What you don't do is talk to the area's sorry collection of poverty pimps and the usual suspects with connection to the Steve Clark M-D Building in downtown Miami or at Dinner Key Auditorium, but real civic activists who don't personally profit financially from their work in the community. (The better to insulate yourself from future revelations.)

Frankly, the sort of serious high-minded people whom you don't have to waste time and resources on later reminding them to vote because they are, in fact, so busy being your shock troops at getting their own large circle of friends and acquaintances to the polls, you can instead concentrate on whether you need to devote time and energy on some areas that are under-performing or simply cut the cord and write-off some neighborhoods as un-winnable when you are running against so many opponents.

But in order to get those trusted community people on your side, you have to reach out to them.

Back in early January, I sent out an email to a few dozen friends and acquaintances throughout the Broward portion of FL-17 asking them to let me know if they ever heard about any
appearances by Galvin or any of the other FL-17 candidates, so I could arrange to be there and see them in action for myself.

Then I decided to set up separate Google Alerts for Galvin and certain of the other FL-17 candidates, so that I would have a good working intelligence base for following the various words and moves of the candidates, whether in print on TV or in blog posts.

I still have all of them in my computer, accessible in just seconds, and it has proven invaluable, but not for the reasons that I'd have originally imagined.

Now given how things have gone the last few months, where Galvin has seemingly done none of the things I think he ought to have done, has a website that is average at best, etc., I suppose I could mention some of the names of the dozens of such community people in the Broward portion of FL-17 whom I respect in Hollywood, Hallandale Beach and over in Pembroke Pines.

Folks that clearly should've been contacted by Scott Galvin and his team back in January and February if they wanted to be taken seriously NOW.

People who are persuasive as a result of their own hard work and ethics, dedication to their community's betterment and genuine honesty, even if you disagree with them on individual issues from time-to-time.

But they never received a phone call to arrange a personal meeting, never received an email saying that Galvin would be at so-and-so's and would like to speak with them alone after wards.

That's how you do it, especially when you don't have a lot of money to invest in sizable TV ad buys to keep your name recognition high in areas where you are otherwise a complete unknown, despite only living a few miles away.

So what was the Scott Galvin campaign strategy, exactly?

Nobody I sent that head's-up email to all those months ago ever heard from him, and they remain as flummoxed as I am now knowing that he had to run an upbeat, issues-oriented campaign that was decidedly different than his blah opponents, and has instead run a poor mishmash of a campaign that continually emphasized issues that have nothing to do with the job he is seeking: U.S. Representative.

That's why I titled my post about him on Friday the way that I did, FL-17's Scott Galvin isn't running for Class President, he's running for Congress. Different rules and standards apply.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/fl-17s-scott-galvin-isnt-running-for.html
after having previously taken him to task here on May 20th,
The FL-17 race that Scott Galvin ought to be hitting his stride in, is actually showing his immaturity. Has Galvin ALREADY blown it? http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/fl-17-race-that-scott-galvin-ought-to.html


"I'll do things differently."
Actually, that's what you needed to do in order to get the nomination.
News flash: You didn't do it.

That Galvin is so much more liberal than me I understood, this area being what it is, but just because you are liberal doesn't mean that you don't have to make any effort to reach moderate Dems like myself. And what did you talk about in your campaign literature?

Beach renourishment, traffic congestion, libraries, parks...?

Those are not issues to get you elected to Congress, they're issues to get you in line to replace Sally Heyman on the Miami-Dade County Commission, which perhaps would be best for all concerned.
What's his opinion of ending the tyranny of congressional earmarks?

It's my educated guess that his calendar since January 1st is littered with lots of wasted opportunities that he can likely not recover from, which is why perhaps what this race really proved about Galvin was that he's not ready to be a national prime-time player.

Maybe setting his sights on the Miami-Dade County Board is the thing for him to do.

But if he wants to do that, he and his supporters need to learn a few lessons.

First, don't put campaign signs on school property.


Above and below, July 31, 2010 photos by South Beach Hoosier of Scott Galvin campaign posters on school property in Hallandale Beach. They were there for weeks. Learn the rules of where you can place campaign signs.


And that goes for supporters of FL-17 candidate Phillip Brutus and U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, who for months have had their signs in all sorts of places that are forbidden.
Is that on church property or the public right-of-way?
You decide.
In any case, it's been there for a while.

July 21, 2010 photos by South Beach Hoosier.


Yes, that's definitely a cross on the top of that building.


Second, don't approve photos or material for your campaign literature without knowing that you came by them honestly and legally.

In the case of the photos of Hallandale Beach City Hall and Hollywood City Hall on the cover of the material I received in my mailbox last week, I know that's not the case because they are MY photos, ones I took and have used on this blog.






When you do a Google search for Hollywood City Hall and then click Images, what is the first photo that comes up of all the possible photos in the world?
Let's see...


August 20, 2010 screen shot by South Beach Hoosier


Yes, it's MY photo, as the URL is listed on the description.
In fact, the shape of the clouds in the sky and the composition of the parked bicycles prove it.

It's less than a 20-minute drive from North Miami City Hall to Hallandale Beach City Hall, and another 15 minutes up to Hollywood if you don't catch red lights all the way up.

If you and your campaign saw the photos on my blog and liked the idea of using photos of the city halls in the 17th district in your campaign ads, since I can't patent an idea, per se, you and your campaign could've sent someone to take shots for your ads and that would be that.

Instead, though, in the laziest and most egregiously obvious way possible, you took something that didn't belong to you, did so without asking me or notifying me, without any credit on the material itself and on and on.
And now everyone knows it.
Congratulations!

But your campaign made damn sure that your mailer had a little Union Bug on it for the benefit of those who find that important?
So, I give up, which is it, attention to detail or no attention at all?

That sort of oblivious, half-assed behavior with respect to the use of my photos in these campaign ads is symptomatic of the larger problems of the 2010 Galvin campaign that looks likely to come to an end on Tuesday night -bad communications.

My vote against Galvin on Tuesday will be with that in mind.

Above, August 20, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier in Hollywood, FL for early voting.

------

FYI: Due to a problem with the scanner, I decided to take shots of the Scott Galvin campaign literature while I was at the Panera Bread, below, located on East Hallandale Beach Blvd., which is why the photos aren't as good as they'd ordinarily be, and why you can see part of the table in the shots or ceiling lights reflecting on the material.

Above, the Panera Bread in Hallandale Beach with The Duo condominium towers overlooking it on the south side and the Diplomat Golf Course on the north side.

My coffee of choice there is hazelnut with a bit of honey and cinnamon.

FL-17's Scott Galvin isn't running for Class President, he's running for Congress. Different rules and standards apply.

Per my email earlier post today, Coming Sunday: Scott Galvin's FL-17 congressional campaign is using MY blog photos on his direct mail campaign ads without my permission,
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/coming-sunday-scott-galvins-fl-17.html a Scott Galvin supporter from North Miami can't quite 'hold-his-horses.'

He couldn't simply wait patiently until Sunday for the photographic proof I will be posting here that was, after all, literally, mailed to me by Galvin's campaign, that among the many other things that have been said and written about FL-17 congressional candidate Scott Galvin of North Miami over the past few months, that he is impatient, lacks gravitas and perhaps a little too thin-skinned to be an elected official beyond the parochial city limits of North Miami, Galvin seems to lack the ability to effectively manage and delegate to subordinates. You know, his own campaign workers and contractors?
That's not a good sign for him now or for his political future.

This swiping of my photos without my permission is but the latest example I've seen that he is not quite ready for prime time.

On Sunday, I'll have YET another example altogether, complete with photos -ones that I've been sitting on for weeks- showing that serious citizens concerned about the innate character and common sense of their representation in Washington, D.C. would be wise to look elsewhere.

Scott Galvin isn't running for Class President, he's running for Congress, and we don't have to pretend to like him if we find him lacking in character or don't believe he will be a genuine common sense independent voice for positive change instead of an ideologue.
Different rules and standards apply, but he and his supporters seem not to have gotten that memo.
But he's hardly alone in that respect.

For this congressional election, this year, in my opinion, Galvin simply isn't the caliber of person I want representing me and my part of this country in D.C.
I want a unique voice who will challenge the conventional wisdom and negative reputation of South Florida congressmen, NOT another member for the echo chamber.
You have to represent citizens who disagree with you, too.

Below is the email exactly as it was sent to me this morning for inclusion in reader comments. While clearly well-intentioned, it only serves to confirm my suspicions that Scott Galvin & Company are NOT ready for prime time right now.
Maybe in the future after he's really really done something, but definitely NOT now.
Maybe others are willing to waste their vote, but I'm not.

We surely don't need more show horses like Alan Grayson in Congress, we need more work horses.
I spent over 15 years in Washington, much of it on Capitol Hill, and know the difference between the two from seeing examples of both nearly everyday.
I suspect most of you have the good sense to appreciate the distinction as well.

------
With all the problems that our country, state and local community faces, does this really matter? Galvin has been an exemplary public servant. He has run a classy, clean and progressive campaign.
If some graphic designer searched the web for an image, and used it for one of his mailers, is it really reflective on him in any way? I can guarantee you that Galvin does not design his own mail pieces. Nor does any other candidate.
Of all the things to talk about in this election, this is the one that I have seen that matters the least. Galvin is a terrific candidate.

Watch this space on Sunday and judge for yourself whether you want someone representing you in Washington who doesn't pay attention to what he says and does.
I do.

Coming Sunday: Scott Galvin's FL-17 congressional campaign is using MY blog photos on his direct mail campaign ads without my permission

Coming Sunday: Scott Galvin's FL-17 congressional campaign is using MY blog photos on his direct mail campaign ads without my permission.
CLUMSILY!

Pure and simple, on Thursday I caught Galvin engaging in unethical behavior even BEFORE he ever got anywhere near Washington, which is certainly an Early Bird approach, I'll grant you, but frankly, I don't think even using MY photos will help him emerge on top on Tuesday, despite his appropriating something that's NOT his to use.

Just because a photo is on the Internet doesn't mean that you and your campaign staff get to use it for whatever purpose you want.
It doesn't belong to YOU!

Do I really need to explain this concept to someone who is running for U.S. Congress?
Apparently, in the South Florida of the year 2010, I do.

I'll connect-the-dots on this subject and show you the campaign piece he's so clumsily using and show you the photos as I originally used them here on my blog.

And if you happen to have any Scott Galvin campaign mail anywhere in your house, don't throw it out -yet.
It'll come in handy on Sunday when you play a game of compare-and-contrast at home, though you won't have to put on your detective hat.

If this had been a tougher call and not such a slam dunk for my own brand of sleuthing, I might have needed to enlist the help of a top-shelf detective to handle the investigation.

There's a detective I've been hearing really great things about from friends out in Cali who might be of some help to us in the future here in Hallandale Beach and Broward County, what with all the political miscreants and their lawyer/lobbyist acolytes hereabouts, though I should mention that he isn't cheap.

This cat goes by the name of Mannix.
Joe Mannix.
Perhaps you've heard of him?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyZL_3bxD68



Now HE will get us the answers we want!

Plus, I'll also be analyzing campaign direct mail in Broward County for some salient signs the MSM has completely missed, and since South Florida's MSM has been particularly lazy and fact-challenged this particular summer of swelter, there's an awful lot to mull over.
All of that to come on Sunday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF_49tWPNWA



I loved this TV show as a kid growing-up down here, as did all my friends!

The FL-17 race that Scott Galvin ought to be hitting his stride in, is actually showing his immaturity. Has Galvin ALREADY blown it?

My comments follow the article, which continues South Florida's recent rash of quorum problems: Hallandale Beach City Commission, Fort Lauderdale Planning & Zoning Board and North Miami City Council.

-----
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/27/1652344/north-miami-councilmen-scott-galvin.html

North Miami Councilmen Scott Galvin and Michael Blynn leave meeting

By NADEGE CHARLES
The Miami Herald

Outraged over a comment made by North Miami Mayor Andre Pierre, Councilman Scott Galvin and Councilman Michael Blynn stormed out of a contentious meeting with Solar Mountain, the firm expected to take over the now-defunct Biscayne Landing site.

The walkout occurred after Pierre told the two councilmen -- who had already threatened to leave -- that they should not make threats they didn't intend to keep.

Wednesday's meeting drew a crowd of residents to City Hall to voice their opinions on the prospect of a solar-powered theme park on what was originally intended to be a massive residential condo development.

Solar Mountain is asking for a controversial change to the lease agreement that would absolve them from having to spend $28 million in improving other areas of the city.

In place of the off-site improvements, the company proposes to pay a flat $7.5 million.

The proposal came across heavy opposition from Galvin and Blynn, who openly expressed skepticism over whether Solar Mountain's principals would be able to secure financing to complete the proposed winter-themed park.

Galvin asked Marc Douthit, president of Solar Mountain, for proof that the company had money.

Douthit said the firm's funding was solely through private equity. He indicated he was willing to share the firm's money source with the city confidentially, but because any documents presented to the city becomes public record, he could not.

If Solar Mountain cannot open its books to the city, Galvin said, "Let us cease and desist.'' Dissatisfied with Douthit's response, he threatened to walk out of the meeting.

Blynn also said he would walk out.

Shortly after a 10-minute recess an hour into the meeting, the mayor asked if Blynn and Galvin planned to stay.

When both councilmen indicated that they would, Pierre sniped: "Don't make any threats you have no intention on carrying out.''

That comment prompted Galvin to walk out, followed by Blynn, leaving only Pierre and Councilwoman Marie Steril, who had arrived late.

Councilman Jean Marcellus, whose wife passed away over the weekend, did not attend Wednesday night's meeting.

With no quorum, the workshop ended early -- frustrating many residents who had unanswered questions

"This is nonsense,'' said Gerier Origene. "There is no respect for the people. I want to know what Solar Mountain can do for the city, but the politicians are too busy playing politics.''

The plan was on the agenda for the city to hold a public workshop for Solar Mountain representatives to present their project followed by an emergency council meeting to vote whether the city would enter into negotiations to amend the lease.

Critics of Solar Mountain argue that the group's principals are inexperienced developers with ties to the mayor, and say they are trying to cheat the city out of millions of dollars owed in off-site obligations.

Pierre and Douthit are former law partners. Another principal, Willis Howard, is Pierre's former campaign manager. "If they will not live up to the agreement that they bought, we need to let it fall,'' said Michael Killiany, a North Miami resident who suggested the city go out to bid for new developers.

From early on there was obvious friction on the dais when Galvin announced the vote was two to one, indicating he and Blynn were against and the mayor was in favor of the project.

But reached after the meeting, Pierre said he had not made a made a decision on the project.

Supporters say the group's proposal -- which says it will create 5,530 construction jobs plus support another 3,983 permanent jobs -- will aid unemployed and struggling residents.

When the subject of jobs arises, North Miami resident Tanisha Rizer, said she is willing to listen.

"You have a lot of poor families in North Miami, a lot of impoverished children. I'm unemployed, I need a job,'' she said.

It's unclear if another workshop will be rescheduled with the city, but Douthit said he would prefer to meet with community members outside of city hall.

"I'm not interested in another workshop with the city,'' he said.

The walkout spurred allegations of racism from one Solar Mountain representative.

After the meeting, Howard said he believed Galvin and Blynn left because the last person to speak, Rizer, is an African-American resident who spoke about unemployment.

Galvin did not leave immediately after Rizer spoke, however. He left shortly after the meeting reconvened after the break.

Reached after the meeting Galvin said, "It's ridiculous to suggest I'm racist, I just want to focus on the project on hand and not get into name calling.''

Residents like Carol Keys supported the council members' hasty exit.

"The mayor has a tendency to be rude to fellow council people and Scott wasn't going to take it,'' Keys said.

Pierre who grew up in a Long Island suburb defended his comment, saying he was not being rude.

"I grew up in the ghetto of Westbury, New York,'' he said after the meeting, referring to the Long Island village. "You don't make threats you're not going to keep.''

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The purpose of this post is not to discuss the relative merits of the development project described above in North Miami, in an area I know very well, since I spent lots of time growing-up down here doing things in North Miami -Fourth of July fireworks at the city park on NE 135th Street when it first opened, Marcella's, Carvel's, and the fabulous Spinelli Brothers barber shop, to name but a few.

The latter was the fabulous hangout for South Florida sports media and Dolphin players -esp. Garo- in the early and mid-1970's, and the brothers were my official NMB Optimist sponsor for football, which meant that my photo hung up in their shop that was full of photos of show biz celebs, their particular place on the wall memorized by me as I sat in the barber chair as if they were stars up in the night sky.

I even recall when the specific area in the article was going to be part of our path to the furure, Interama.

No, the purpose of this particular post is to ask publicly whether or not North Miami City Councilman Scott Galvin, one of 11 candidates to replace Kendrick Meek in Congress for the 17th District -and the only White candidate- has already blown his opportunity to lay the groundwork for a big upset in late August?

In reading this story, I can't help but wonder if Scott Galvin has actually been to Capitol Hill before, and and seen what long House Committee meetings are really like?

Or is he our very own latter-day Edward Markey, the Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy and Environment Subcommittee -whom I first came to know in the early '90's when he was the Chair of the super-important Telecommunications & Finance subcommittee, which had many well-known controversial hearings I attended- but who in his first campaign running for Congress from Massachusetts, had to admit that he'd never visited Washington before? http://markey.house.gov/
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php

For the newest Members, it's hours and hours of listening to people with much more seniority -but perhaps much less actual smarts or common sense- ask all the good questions in front of whatever media chooses to attend, while you just have to sit there like furniture, filling up the picture.
It just gnaws at you, but hey, that's the system.
The important thing is to not fall asleep!

Given what I had heard about Galvin, that he was a savvy guy full of good ideas, despite having worked for Carrie Meek, I really would've thought that at this point in the CD-17 campaign, he'd actually be publicly asking some questions and raising issues that re-inforce his strengths, even while the other candidates -and the Herald- seem inclined to just ignore those issues for another couple of months, given their largely inarticulate and ineffective campaigns, especially their lack of serious outreach to the Broward part of the district -where I live.

My slice of the political universe -map of Florida’s 17th Congressional District.


From http://www.govtrack.us/
"We help you keep tabs on the U.S. Congress. This is the independent, nonpartisan website that started the "civic hacking" movement around the United States Congress."

But after reading an article like this one, that seems to indicate a great deal of immaturity, I'm beginning to wonder whether there's any point in him making appearances in Hallandale Beach in the future, where none of the other candidates have visited, which if he'd played his cards right, he could have have made into a relative stronghold by now.

The sort of immaturity described in the article is rewarded in Congress by your colleagues simply ignoring you.

As most of you know by now, I spent 15 years up there and saw it for myself on Capitol Hill, since nobody wants to be regularly seen in the presence of someone who can't keep their ego and mouth in check. That's part of why they call it a collegial body.

Oftentimes, the very people you dislike the most are in your own party, and then what do you do? If you're a Freshman Member, you just have to sit there and take it, not pop-up and pop-off.

See also: Tim Smith's Fort Lauderdale
P&Z ... What's Up With No Meeting Again?
Posted by Tim Smith at 5/28/2010 9:27 AM http://blog.timsmith.com/2010/05/28/pz-pawn.aspx